Who We Were
by Lynyrd Lionheart
Summary: If the end of the world taught Caroline Forbes anything, it was that she was more like Katherine Pierce than she would like to admit. So how is it that the consummate survivor somehow fell for the man whose existence is the reason she's on the run to begin with?


**Who We Were**

**AN: Yes, I have other projects I should be working on. But this needed to be written. So, I love Chris Halliwell. I also love Caroline Forbes. So I figured why not write them together? And so the idea of this crossover was born, because people were all 'yes, do it!' on Tumblr, and I am weak willed. This is part one, in what will be a three part series.**

They were all dead. All but her and Enzo.

Staying together hadn't been an option. Elena had been… _God, but Elena had been so stupid!_ She had been so stupid, and because of her everyone else was dead and they were marked for death. All because Elena decided she needed to one up the fucking _Twice Blessed_.

Not that long ago, those words had meant nothing to Caroline. Her world had consisted of vampires, werewolves, and witches, but it wasn't until Wyatt Halliwell revealed magic to the world that Caroline discovered there was so much _more_.

And that a Bennett witch? That had nothing on someone from the Halliwell line.

And now he had marked her for death.

Caroline had thought she was a goner. She had fled and figured she was living on borrowed time. But once she actively began to hide?

She was _good_ at it.

She was good at fight or flight, at hiding from demons. Learning to carry an athame for knifing them in the back? Easy as breathing. She had always thought of herself as a team player – a little reckless, a lot bossy, and worth absolutely nothing on her own. But it turned out she'd had herself all wrong. In survival of the fittest, Caroline was the fittest, and she worked best alone.

_Are you sure of that? Or are you just too stupid and useless to notice when someone stronger is playing with you. Letting you run around for fun_.

Caroline gritted her teeth at the thought. Maybe she had simply been on her own for too long, the silence getting to her. A year later and she was still free and alive, but niggling doubts would creep up on her every now and then.

_A year without Enzo. He's probably dead._

_That_ was a thought she didn't want, and it nearly brought her up short. But she was hurrying down the street, tucked in a coat, and if she suddenly halted… she needed to stay ahead of any probes that might find her. She was a vampire without powers in world of witches and demons that could do amazing things. The only things she had going for her were her brains and her speed.

_What brains? Miss Mystic Falls and nothing more to your name._

She hissed, ducking down an alley. In the wake of the end of the world, there was only one thing she could rely on – instinct.

_Elena likely used instinct. What did it get her?_

And Caroline's instincts were screaming that something was _wrong_.

She whirled suddenly, athame, and pinned the grey haired man that suddenly shimmered into existence under her hands against the alley wall.

"Who are you?" she demanded, fangs down and bared.

"Now, now, now, little vampire. Let's not be so hasty," the man – _demon_, Caroline had encountered enough to recognize a demon – spoke in a smooth voice. It was almost soothing, except that the cadence of it, the way it flowed, was just like the dark thoughts she'd been having for the better part of a month. "You're part of a dying breed, and dying breeds need allies."

"_Who are you_?" Caroline demanded again. Making deals with demons… no. It wouldn't end well for her. Not when most of them worked for Wyatt Halliwell, and he wanted her _dead_.

She could remember it still, cold blue eyes, sword flashing. Blood everywhere and Elena… Elena…

_Damn Elena_ a thousand times for the fool she was. Had been.

"I'm the bearer of glad tidings," the demon replied, and he shimmered out from under hands. Caroline spun, knife coming to rest at the base of his throat as he shimmered into existence once more. She was a quick study, and Demons often moved in the same way, used similar techniques. Especially lone demons. "And I have to admit, you're far more clever than I would have thought. When I first saw you… I gave you a month. But here we are, a year later, and you're smarter, faster, stronger, and a step ahead of His demons."

"But not you," Caroline noted with narrowed eyes, and the demon smiled – it was a grandfatherly smile, _he was_ grandfatherly, and all the more chilling for it – and raised his hands innocently.

"Don't feel bad, Sweetheart. No one can outrun fear itself."

The words surprised her, made her take a surprised step back.

"Barbas," she said, through lips that felt almost numb. A year and Caroline had spent every moment she wasn't running studying. She found magic books and torn pages left by massacred witch families. She listened to news reports carefully. Everything she could find out about witches and demons and all the other magical beings, she took in remembered. Because you never knew when that knowledge could save your life. After a year, she still had a lot to learn, but she knew about Barbas, Demon of Fear and all but impossible to kill.

Just ask the Charmed Ones. They had tried – multiple times. And each time he returned.

"Ah, yes. The Halliwell sisters. They were my greatest opponents. Who would have ever guessed their precious Twice Blessed would become… well, _this_."

Caroline looked around. They were in the alley, but the world outside it really wasn't much better than the dank, empty darkness. It probably smelled even worse.

"I can't help you," she stated after a moment, sliding the athame back into her boot. "I'm just… well, you know what I am. I can't even shimmer or flame like the vampires from the Underworld can. So whatever you think you know about me? It's wrong."

She turned to leave, only for Barbas to shimmer in front of her.

"And if I could give you those abilities? The ones that would put you on equal footing with the demons He just loves to send after you" – Barbas dangled a necklace in front of her, a delicate silver chain with an intricate pendant carved with runes – "then would you maybe feel a little useful?"

"Why?" Caroline replied, because trusting demons would get you killed, and trusting _this_ demon?

Killed even faster.

"You know why. He hunts you because he wants your kind eradicated. He hunts _me_ so he can tell one and all that a Halliwell finally managed to remove me from the picture permanently. I need allies, little vampire, and desperate allies are always best."

"And I'm desperate," Caroline replied grimly, because there was no point in denying it. She had survived a year on her own, but it was still borrowed time so long as they had powers and she didn't. "What do you want in return? I don't believe alliance is it."

"Such a smart girl. I want _loyalty_. Can you give me that, Caroline Forbes?"

Once, Caroline would have turned him down without hesitation. She was one of the good ones, a good vampire, and good vampires didn't make deals with the devil. Barbas was exactly the type of creature that she once would have spent months trying to destroy, probably losing someone she loved along the way.

But it was the end of the world and lines between good and bad were blurred and in the end, it turned out Caroline was far more like Katherine Pierce than she would ever care to admit. She reached out and grabbed the necklace from Barbas' hand.

"Deal."

**Two Years Later**

"It's good to hear your voice, Gorgeous."

"Yours too."

Caroline leaned against the wall of the mall, tried to act normal. The call was monitored, of course, but the phone would be discarded and she would be long gone before those monitoring it realized _who_ they were listening to.

"Staying safe?" Enzo asked, and Caroline let a small smile curve her lips.

"Always. I'm still stateside" – her way of letting him know that she was still somewhere in the U.S.

"Really? I thought you would be long gone from there by now. I'm sprucing up on my family history these days."

Europe, then. They couldn't be more specific than that – exact locations meant they could give each other away. And they had both agreed that if they were ever caught, they were to go along with the demons and the torture. No playing hero to save each other.

There weren't heroes anymore. Just Wyatt Halliwell and his Empire, and the people crushed beneath it.

"Send me a postcard," Caroline replied, and she caught a flash of black out of the corner of her eye. Demons headed her way, and her throat went tight, because they shouldn't be there looking for her. Not yet. "I have to go, though. Duty calls."

She hung up the phone before Enzo could reply, tucked it in her pocket, and began to stroll in the opposite direction from the demons.

More appeared, this time flaming into a ring around her.

"Can I help you, gentlemen?" she asked, trying to keep her voice strong, her back straight. Show no weakness – a mantra she had learned quickly after everyone had died, and one that Barbas had hammered home every time he thought to feed on her fears in the eighteen months she had spent with him.

"Master Wyatt wants to see you, vampire," one of the demons replied, conjuring a fireball. Caroline stared at it with wide eyes, her fingers drifting up to her neck and the pendant that hung there. It held the ability to shimmer, and to throw energy balls. If she could get close enough to this demon, she could get his fire balls –

"I wouldn't do that, sweetheart."

The smooth, easygoing voice made her freeze. Barbas sidled into place in front of her, his grandfatherly visage charming as ever, but his eyes held a hint of fire.

He was angry.

Caroline wasn't surprised by that. After all, she _had_ managed to evade him for the past six months. Ever since their… disagreement.

"You're alive," Caroline noted, her hand clenching into a fist. "I thought you would be vanquished by now."

"Master Wyatt in his infinite wisdom recognized my value to him" – Barbas flourished his hand and smirked – "I was granted a second lease on life."

"I'm pretty sure you're well beyond seconds," Caroline replied, and Barbas simply shrugged. "So, you sold me out. Should I be honored, that giving him me was enough to gain you mercy? Oooh, or should I ask how _pissed_ he's been, that you've come up with nothing for months."

"She has a sharp tongue," Barbas informed the other demons over his shoulder. "I never could quite cure her of that."

"Go to hell," Caroline told him pleasantly, so pleasantly that he didn't even really compute what she had said at first. Not until her energy ball sent him stumbling back into three of the demons and Caroline took the opportunity to vault from the second floor of the mall down to the first.

She considered shimmering, but Barbas knew her, knew her patterns. That was the reason she had avoided using the amulet as much as possible in the last six months. Except for the telekinesis she had gotten from an unfortunate, dying witch. That she had taken four months ago, after separating from Barbas. He couldn't track what he didn't know about.

Caroline flashed for the exit.

Demons were already there.

She could fight, and she fought _dirty_. But one vampire with minimal stolen powers and an athame couldn't hold up against the well prepared group that had been sent to apprehend her.

As she knelt on the ground, held in place by two demons, Barbas sauntered up and lifted the necklace, looking at it with a small smile, before meeting her eyes. She glared up at him, read for him to take away the powers that had helped her stay alive. Instead, he smirked and let the necklace drop.

"Take her away boys," Barbas said to them, before looking her straight in the eye. "When the Master is done… well, we will have to talk, Caroline."

Then he disappeared as she was shimmered away. When the world righted itself, she was no longer in the mall. Instead, she was in a well-furnished room. Expensive furniture, decorated in black leather and granite countertops and white walls.

It looked like a show home, which she supposed was fitting for the Grand Master of All.

"This is it, then?" demanded a cold voice, and for the second time in her life, Caroline saw Wyatt Halliwell's face in person. His hair was longer than before, reaching his shoulders rather than curling just below his ears. And he sported a goatee. But those eyes were the same – blue and cold and so very, very frightening.

And how sad was it, that Caroline at over thirty years old was afraid of someone that should still be in College. But he was the Twice Blessed, the child meant to be a Paragon of Good, that had somehow Turned Bad. She knew a lot more about the Halliwells now, and none of it had given her hope for Wyatt ever losing his grip on power.

"Hmmm, you're pretty," Wyatt noted, walking in a circle around Caroline and the demons that held her. "I didn't expect that. I suppose it was naïve, to think that the monster would show for the world to see."

He didn't remember her, she realized. And then wondered if that was a good thing, or should she feel insulted?

"No matter. You'll tell us where the others are, and then you'll die."

_Others_? Caroline thought blankly, then she schooled her face into what she hoped was an unreadable expression, because if Wyatt knew she didn't know what he was talking about…

She needed time, if she wanted to escape. And time meant making them believe she knew more than she let on.

"I thought you would all die when I killed the Hybrid," Wyatt stated as he turned his back on her and sauntered away a few steps before spinning back around. Caroline started at his words. The Hybrid could only mean Klaus… Klaus who had once promised her forever, and now he was dead?

She was sad, she realized with some surprise. The thought of Klaus dead… it caused more pain than she had expected. But it also caused surprise. He had said he was the originator of her line. She had believed it.

"But the little Claire witch had already cut him off from his line. It made things difficult," Wyatt continued, and Caroline refused to let anything show in her expression, but she was curious. What the hell had Klaus been getting _up_ to in New Orleans? Who was the Claire witch, and why would she break the bloodlines? "I should have been more careful, of course. And once I realized what she had done… well, I didn't kill the other two immediately. I remade the lines. But he was already dead, along with any chance of easily killing his line. Do you know why I'm telling you this, Creature?"

"I would imagine it's because you want me to fear you," Caroline replied evenly. "Sadly for you, there's no room left in me for fear."

Wyatt watched her with those eerie blue eyes, and Caroline could remember that day three years ago so clearly. The way those eyes had been ignited in anger, how his sword – _Excalibur_ – had shone, glinting and seeming so at odds with Wyatt's darkness. How red Elena's blood had looked, when it coated the blade –

"You're lying," Wyatt stated, breaking through her dark memories, and Caroline clenched her jaw as she met his gaze again. "A foolish thing to lie about, but you are. You fear _me_. It's rather smart of you, truth be told. I will kill you, Creature. How painful that death… well, you get to decide that."

As though to prove his point, he held out his hand and summoned a ball of blue energy, throwing it at her. The demons holding her in place stepped back at the last moment, leaving her shoulder open to the attack that sent her sprawling back. She gave an angry hiss as the pain radiated out from her shoulder, down her arm. It wasn't the first energy ball she had ever been on the receiving end of, but she thought it might be one of the more painful.

"Go to hell," she gritted out, struggling to sit. She and Enzo may have promised to never die saving the other, but Caroline decided that this situation was unique. She wouldn't be dying _for_ him, per se, but more to just piss Wyatt off.

If she was to die either way, she might as well go out stubborn.

"Ah, Creature… I've been to hell and back again. There's nothing left there that frightens me" – he turned to the demons, leaving Caroline unable to see his expression as he spoke to them – "question her. Be brutal as you need, we all know how well her kind heals. But don't kill her. Not until we get enough names and locations to please me" – he turned back to her once more, and his expression was almost jovial, and it made her bare her fangs at him – "I've been to hell, Creature, and came out the other side stronger than ever. Let us see how you deal with it."

Then he left in a flurry of dark orbs, a sure sign that he had turned his back on the path of good or whatever it was he supposed to do, and left Caroline to his demons. They smirked and she heard several crack their knuckles, and Caroline just looked at them with a stony expression.

If Wyatt thought they could get her to speak, he greatly underestimated her. She had felt the burn of the sun on her skin, and the pain of vervain. She had taken bullets to the head and stakes to the stomach.

Demons really weren't that creative. They used energy and fire balls, and lacked the imagination that humans had to develop to make up for a lack of powers. Caroline may have screamed as fire was set to her skin, but the laughter of demons was nothing to the memory of her father – _I'm trying to fix you_ – and the knowledge that he had hated what she was so much, that he had chosen death over it.

If she could survive that pain at seventeen, then anything these demons could do was child's play.

"Now, you aren't looking so good."

Caroline looked up at Barbas. The demons had finally left her to take a break. Her healing was sluggish from a lack of blood, and her eye was still swollen, though it had gone down greatly from what it had been even two minutes prior. But she knew she must look like crap, so she sneered at Barbas and spat blood at his feet. He tsk-ed in reply.

"Now that's just rude, Caroline. And after I left you with our pendant and everything" – he lifted the necklace and stroked it with his thumb – "you've been under using this, Sweetheart. You should have more than three measly powers in it."

"Go to hell, Barbas. Besides, your necklace isn't much help. I can't use the powers," she croaked in reply, and he tsk-ed again.

"Didn't you wonder? Why our merciful lord and master let you keep this?"

Caroline didn't reply, though she had wondered once or twice when she had managed to detach herself somewhat from the torture.

"It's because it's been spelled. Not even the great Wyatt Halliwell can see or sense this. His chains may keep you from using them, but he doesn't know the source of those abilities of yours. Just the two of us. Powerful magic, there. And you don't even thank me for it."

"Thank-you," Caroline spat out, and Barbas chuckled.

"I have every faith in you, Caroline."

"If you have faith in me, why bring me in the first place?" Caroline demanded as Barbas turned his back. The grey-haired demon just shrugged in reply.

"Life is a mysterious thing, Caroline."

He shimmered away, leaving Caroline to ruminate on his words and wonder when the next round of torture would be begin again. When she heard the door open behind her, she thought it somewhat odd, since all of the demons had either shimmered or flamed when they had left, but she braced herself for the next onslaught all the same.

"I remember you," she heard, and then soft treads until a young man stood in front of her. He had brown hair and green eyes, and Caroline felt her breath catch because three years and the boy was simultaneously unchanged and nearly unrecognizable.

_"What you want to do will get us killed!"_

_ "It's the only way to save us all! Family… at the end of the day family is important. He'll give us what we want, if the alternative is to lose his brother."_

_ "Or he'll realize that we're bluffing and blow us all up!"_

_ "Who said I'm bluffing, Care?"_

Caroline could still remember the look in Elena's eyes. She had been mad with grief and loss, that was the only explanation Caroline could think of, even years later. Elena's humanity had been too hard fought for, for her friend to give it up so easily. So it had to be madness that made her think to use an innocent boy against his brother.

"Christopher Halliwell," Caroline breathed out, meeting his gaze. "It's been a while, but I remember you as well. The reason my species is a dying breed."

"I didn't ask your friend to kidnap me," he pointed out logically, and Caroline let out a grating laugh, her voice hoarse from the screaming. The words had been a meaningless dig. She had never thought him to blame for Elena's spectacular stupidity, but it was interesting to see the way her words affected him. The way guilt flared.

Christopher Halliwell, it seemed, had a bit of a conscious.

"No," she agreed. "I suppose you didn't. What are you doing here, Christopher? Making sure the big bad vampire is securely locked up?"

"You tried to talk her out of it," Christopher replied, squatting so Caroline didn't have to crane her head back to see him. "I remember that. You tried to tell her that what she was doing was wrong. I remember being surprised, because the vampires I know… none of them would have tried to save me like you did."

"You didn't need saving in the end anyway," Caroline replied, somewhat bitterly. She didn't like to be reminded of their folly, of the loss of everyone she had loved. "You were playing us the whole time. Can you and Wyatt speak telepathically?"

"Not exactly," Christopher said a after a moment. "But sort of. It's hard to explain."

"Hmm," Caroline replied with a small nod. She looked at him, and found herself struck by the differences between brothers. Where Wyatt was fair haired but dark natured with those cold, vicious eyes, Chris had dark hair but simply seemed… _warm_. He made her think of home – not as it was now, ruined and wrecked the rest of the world, but as it had been back when she was seventeen and still human and innocent and just itching to be done with the small town life. He was the enemy's brother, yet she found herself talking to him. "You know, before your brother… I didn't realize half of this stuff was real. I mean sure, vampires and werewolves and witches. But not demons. And not _Halliwell_ witches, with so much power you can bring the world to its knees. I thought Bonnie was supposed to be strong, but she was nothing compared to what your brother brought."

"How could you not know about any of it?" Chris asked, clearly confused. "You were _part _of it."

"I was a cheerleader that became a vampire at seventeen. Everything I know? I learned by trial and error and a lot of luck in the survival department. Your brother is going to kill me."

"He is," Christopher agreed. "He was enraged, when he realized that Niklaus Mikaelson's vampire line didn't die with him like it was supposed to. It was supposed to be easy – destroy New Orleans and the siblings and be done with your kind. It took him close to three months to figure out how to reinstate the lines of the other two. My brother is… _protective_."

"Is that what you kids call it these days?" Caroline asked, raising a brow. "When I was your age, we called it _evil_."

"Says the vampire."

"I'm a good vampire. At least I _was_ a good vampire. But desperate times…" she trailed off and watched Christopher closely. He wouldn't quite meet her gaze, instead looking at a spot somewhere just over his shoulder. And when she had called Wyatt evil, he had responded quickly, but she had seen it – just before, he had winced. As though she had struck him.

Wyatt Halliwell was evil, there was no doubt of that. But Caroline remembered when Elena had gotten her hands on Christopher…

_"He's just a kid, Elena!" _

_ "He's the brother of _pure_ evil!"_

_ "Look at him! That boy is no more evil than you or I!"_

Afterwards, when everyone else had been dead and Caroline had realized that Christopher had been playing them, had somehow brought his brother to them, she had thought her instincts were wrong. That Christopher was darker than she had thought, to be able to play his part so very well in the face of the possibility of his death.

Now, looking into his eyes, she wasn't so sure.

"You'd be around twenty now, right?" she asked, and Christopher rocked back on his heels with a furrowed brow, clearly surprised by the question.

"Uh, yeah," he replied after a moment. "Last month."

"You're just a kid," she murmured, and she remembered what she had been like at twenty, mourning her mom and Bonnie and half in love with Stefan and playing the exasperated babysitter to Enzo who just refused to stop killing people.

"I'm hardly a _kid_," Christopher sneered in reply, looking for all the world as though she had just called him a monster. "I look older than you."

"Eternally seventeen," Caroline pointed out dryly. "Lots of people look older than me. Doesn't mean they are."

Silence fell between them, and Christopher looked at her before finally sitting down fully, stretching his legs out between them.

"How old are you, then?"

Caroline had to stop to think about that. She hadn't considered her age for a while, knowing that it didn't really matter anymore.

"Thirty-three," she said at last. She did the math quickly again, then gave a sharp nod. "Yeah, thirty-three. Give or take a year."

"Huh… you're young," Christopher noted, pulling up a leg to rest his chin on it. "If you tell Wyatt what he wants to know, your death will be way quicker."

"Is that why you're here?" Caroline asked with some amusement. "To try and get me to talk? I'll give your brother some props, it's clever of him. Get me all tortured up, then send you in to be the soft and sympathetic one. It's cute, almost. But I've had worse, Christopher. And your heart really isn't in this. Best you leave, and send the demons back in."

She thought Christopher might argue, was certain of it when he opened his mouth with a stubborn glint in his eye. Then he stopped, shut his mouth again, and cocked his head as though listening to something. He glanced at the door, then at her, then back to the door.

"Brother calls?" Caroline guessed, and Christopher shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably, getting to his feet.

"I'm sorry it's you," he said to her, and Caroline could tell that he was genuine. That he really _did_ remember her, and how she had tried to talk Elena out of her mad plan. But while Christopher wasn't evil himself, it was clear he didn't know how to handle the brother that was, and Caroline was surprised to realize she felt pity for him, for the way his morals battled with love for his brother. He walked by her, and she heard him pause just out of her eyesight. "Chris."

"What?" she asked in confusion, trying to look back at him, but the chains the demons had put on her held her too tightly, and she finally stopped straining her neck.

"You keep calling me Christopher. Wyatt is the only one that calls me that. Wyatt and… well, I prefer Chris."

"I'll keep that in mind, although I hardly think it will matter. Dead girl walking… or kneeling. Remember?"

"You said that the torture won't work" – she couldn't see him, and the motion made no noise, but she imagined that he was shrugging – "we'll talk again."

Then he began to walk again, before she heard the door open and close and she was left alone once more. Briefly.

Then the demons returned.

XOVER

"Why won't you say anything?"

Caroline didn't reply to Chris' question. Her healing was all but non-existent, and she could feel the burn one of the demons had left on her shoulder still aching. Even more than that, she _couldn't_ speak, her throat too damaged.

"Here."

She felt her head being lifted, and then blood was coating her tongue, red and thick and delicious and she didn't even care that it was cold. She tore violently, throwing back her head so the blood could poor freely down her throat and then snarled when no more came, it hadn't been enough. She needed _more_. She could smell more. More that was warm and fresh.

"Woah," murmured Chris when her gaze landed on him. "You… I wasn't expecting that."

Caroline didn't reply, she strained at her chains, trying to break them, to get to Chris and his blood. He wasn't a human to her anymore, but just another food source.

"Shit," he muttered, pulling out another blood bag. He approached her slowly, cautiously, and just managed to avoid getting caught in her fangs as put the blood bag in her mouth. She threw her head back, drinking greedily, and Chris retreated once more, watching her with morbid curiosity.

This time, when she lowered her head, there was awareness in her eyes. She spat the empty blood bag out and closed her eyes, and he watched as the dark veins that had grown prominent beneath them slowly disappeared. He had known she was a vampire of course, that's why he had brought the blood bags. But she had seemed so… _human_ before. And the time before that, when she had been arguing with the pretty brunette that had forced blood down his throat and been so blindly desperate to use Chris for… _something_. He never did find out what that something was.

"Are you okay?" he asked after a moment.

"Give me a second," Caroline replied, closing her eyes again and lowering her head. "I'm sorry. I needed the blood. It's been a while."

Chris didn't reply, too intrigued by the way that the signs of torture disappeared from her now that she had blood. Gone were the bruises and burns, replaced by smooth skin. The swelling around her eye went away, leaving her to look up at him with clear hazel eyes.

She was pretty. Beautiful, even. Young – _she had died at seventeen_, he recalled – and it surprised him to see her like this, healed and whole and looking for all the world like a high school cheerleader.

"It's shocking, isn't it?" she asked after a moment, when he said nothing to her, just stared with interest. "You know what I am. You just saw how monstrous I can be. And yet once it's all gone… I have one of those faces, don't I?"

"One of those faces?" Chris asked, intrigued despite knowing that he shouldn't be. She was a vampire, a monster, and even though she had been the one to try and save him, she had still been companions to someone perfectly willing to kill a seventeen year old in cold blood.

"The kind you want to trust. All wholesome and all-American. Your brother does, too. It's unsettling, because then you look him in the eyes and it just leaves you _cold_."

Chris rubbed his arms and turned his back on her. He didn't want to talk about Wyatt, about his brother's ability to leave one _cold_. He didn't want to agree with her, either, even though her words were nothing but truth. He looked back at her, and she watched him evenly.

"You're the same," he blurted at last, and she raised a blonde brow. "I mean, you look sweet. Like a high schooler. Except your eyes."

"Do I leave you cold, Christopher?" she asked, allowing herself to relax as much as she could, held up with chains as she was.

"Chris," he replied, almost automatically, though he looked away from her uncomfortably. He didn't want to reply to her question. As a vampire, she _should_ leave him cold. Her gaze should feel evil on him, that's what he had been taught. Instead, he just felt as though she could see through him, right to the heart of who Chris Halliwell was, and he wasn't sure he liked it.

Once, Wyatt had been able to do that. Now he was too blinded by power and his own ambitions to notice the little things about Chris, like he once had.

"If you won't tell us about the other vampires, then tell us how you can take powers," Chris said at last, once again sitting down across from her. "No other of your kind could shimmer, or throw energy balls. How can you?"

Caroline stared back at him silently, and Chris gave a frustrated sigh.

"You have to give us _something_, Caroline. If you don't, Wyatt will decide you're not worth it, and he _will_ kill you."

"Then he'll kill me," Caroline replied with a shrug. "Why do you care?"

That rocked Chris back, and if he hadn't been sitting already, he probably would have fallen to the floor. Why _did_ he care? She was just another vampire, another demon… if there was one thing Wyatt was doing that Chris could agree with it was killing off demon lines like hers.

So why did he not want her to be killed off?

"I have one of those faces," she said after a moment, repeating her words from earlier. "A sweet face. Innocent, even. It makes you want to protect me, doesn't it?" she met Chris' gaze evenly, and he didn't reply, just looked back stubbornly and remained silent. She gave a small, almost bitter smile. "My advice, Christopher? Don't try."

"Chris," he said again.

"I won't tell you anything. Just like I won't tell the demons anything. Good-bye, Christopher."

XOVER

"She remains stubborn against your soft methods, then?" Wyatt asked the moment Chris orbed into the meeting room. He was holding court with several of his high ranking demons – Chris saw Zankou and Barbas both and had to force back the distaste that threatened to show on his face. Enemies of their family for decades, and here Wyatt was giving them high-level positions within his order.

It was an insult to the memory of their family. Of the Aunts and their grandparents.

_Of their mother_.

The thought caused Chris physical pain, and he saw Barbas look at him with a smirk and narrowed eyes, and Chris glared back. He knew how to deal with the Demon of Fear, and tried to make sure that Barbas knew that, simply through the force of his glare.

"If she'll give us nothing, then she'll die," Wyatt said at last. Chris felt a jolt of panic at that – the thought of Caroline, pretty Caroline with the blonde curls and the old eyes and the hints of a smile that he thought could probably light up the world, if she ever got a chance to ever really use it, being dead.

He didn't like it.

"Give me another shot," Christ blurted, and Wyatt looked at him with narrowed, suspicious eyes. Chris cleared his throat and thought wildly, before he began to speak. "Look, she's the first we've managed to catch. They're a rare breed, now that the Originals are dead, and she may be one of the last. I'd just feel more comfortable, if they were gone."

He knew it was a weakness that he showed in front of the demons, but none of them respected him, all of them viewed him as weak, especially when compared to the all-powerful Wyatt, so who cared about their opinions. And it was exactly what Wyatt _thought_ Chris should be feeling, so the suspicions faded from his face, and he gave a nod. Chris felt some guilt, at using what had happened to him against his brother like this, especially when he knew how _worried_ Wyatt had been… but Caroline… Caroline…

_It makes you want to protect me, doesn't it? My advice, Christopher? Don't try._

Her friends had been murdered that day, and Chris refused to feel guilt because that murder had saved his life (_God, he felt guilt… so much guilt. Because of what Wyatt had become, and how he couldn't stop it_), but Caroline hadn't wanted a part in that. Had stayed only because… why? She had nowhere else to go? No one else to turn to?

Why wouldn't she give the names of the other vampires? Did she not know any?

Was she all alone… just like him?

"I'll give you one last chance," Wyatt said at last, pulling Chris' attention back to him. "But if you get nothing, Christopher, then the Creature dies."

_Creature_, the name Wyatt always called her, as thought that somehow meant she had no feelings, that what was happening to her was in no way wrong. Then again, in Wyatt's mind, it probably _wasn't_ wrong.

"One more chance," Chris agreed, already easing his way toward the door. He didn't want to stay too long, afraid that maybe Wyatt _would_ show that he still knew his brother, could read him as easily as he once had.

Out of the room, Chris closed his eyes and breathed out a sigh of relief. He had one more chance, and then Caroline was dead.

Caroline would tell him nothing… which meant she was dead…

_What if there are more? You need to have her available, you need to find out what she knows –_

"That won't work on me, Barbas," Chris spun with a snarl on his face as Barbas made himself visible. The Demon of Fear held up his hands innocently and sauntered toward the young Halliwell.

"You know me, Christopher. Fear… it's just too tempting for me to resist."

"Bullshit," Chris growled out. "You were planting thoughts to get me to save Caroline. Why?"

"I love a good underdog story, and our little vampire's is surely that," Barbas replied with that grandfatherly smile of his that always made Chris want to punch it right off his face.

"There were rumors that you knew her, that that's how you bought your freedom. Wy never told me either way… but you sold her out. So why try to save her?"

"That's not the question that needs to be asked… the question should be, why do _you_ want to save her? I felt it, that delicious fear, when our great lord said she was going to die" – Barbas tapped his lips with his pointer finger, smirking all the while – "she's a pretty girl, isn't she? Our Caroline. I've seen bits and pieces of her when she was younger… a cheerleader. Not very vampiric, but then she's never been one to easily fit in a box. It's why I was interested in her, you see. She should have died almost from the start. But she proved herself to be a survivor."

"I'm not making a deal with you, Barbas," Chris replied, turning his back on the demon.

"And when I tell Wyatt that the girl is turning you against him? Seducing you with her vampire wiles? They can compel, did you know that? Of course you didn't. You know so little about them. It's mind control, and Caroline… she's _spectacular_ at it. It brings a tear of pride, to watch her work _her_ magic, rather than the stolen powers."

"You gave her the ability," Chris stated, whirling around with narrowed eyes. "The shimmering and energy balls… you gave her that ability. Threaten me, and I'll tell Wyatt."

"No proof and I'm an excellent liar" – when Chris continued to glare, Barbas sighed and walked up, wrapping an arm around his shoulders – "come now, Christopher. We both want the same thing. We want our girl alive and well and free of Wyatt. Don't you know how this works? The enemy of your enemy-"

"Is still my enemy," Chris cut him off, pulling away from his hold. "And Wyatt isn't my enemy. He's my brother."

"Brother and enemy aren't mutually exclusive," Barbas pointed out, and Chris clenched his jaw. Barbas watched him and finally shrugged. "Then this is where Caroline's journey ends. It's a rather sad ending, really. All that fight, only to die weak and tortured by the boy she once tried to save."

"If you want her free, why hand her over?" Chris demanded.

"Because I needed her here for a while" – Barbas shrugged and leaned against the wall, brushing some lint only he could see from his black suit – "now I don't. But if her death matters naught to you-"

"I don't trust you. I will never trust you," Chris stated, before sighing, his shoulders sagging. "I hope you have a plan."

Barbas chuckled and clapped his hands together, and Chris felt as though he had just sold his soul to the devil.

XOVER

Caroline woke to the taste of warm blood coating her tongue. It tasted so good, and she tried to grab the source, to pull it even closer, but she couldn't. The damn chains were holding her in place. She growled in frustration, because this blood was delicious, full of power.

_Addicting._

"That's it," murmured a voice, a familiar voice, and then the arm was pulled away. She snarled, trying to hold it with her fangs, but the voice from before yelped and Caroline found herself retracting her fangs before thinking about it.

She didn't want to hurt that voice, for some reason.

She blinked and looked up, and green eyes framed by dark hair looked back. Chris. He reached up to frame her face and made her look at him. She licked his blood from her lips, felt her strength coming back.

"What are you doing?" she asked when he went to the chains, began to mess with them.

"When the demons come, you'll be able to break free of them with your strength," Chris replied, his voice low and quick. "You'll have to move fast after that" – he stepped up to her, tucked an athame in her boot – "use that, I hear you're good at it. Once you're done with that, you need to use your speed to go down to the next floor, to the room furthest south. We'll get you out from there."

"Why?" she asked, staring at him with what she was sure was shock.

"Because you have that kind of face," Chris replied, kneeling down in front of her. "The kind that makes me want to protect you."

"You shouldn't."

Chris stared at her, and she stared back. Then he shocked her again.

He pressed his lips against hers, kissing her as she hadn't been kissed… in years. His hands cradled her face, then buried in her hair, and Caroline found herself kissing him back, getting lost in that scent of his that reminded her of home somehow, even though he had probably never even been to Mystic Falls.

He pulled back, stroked her cheek, and stepped back.

"I probably shouldn't," he said at last. "But I'm going to anyway. One floor down, furthest room south. This all depends on you being fast, Caroline."

Then he orbed away, mere seconds before the demons re-entered the room for their next round. Caroline looked at them and they sneered back.

"Looks like the little _Creature_ is all healed up. We can fix that," one sneered out.

They got into position, prepared themselves, and then Caroline moved.

She pulled the chains out of the floor, using her momentum to use them to hit two of the demons. When the others came for her, she pulled out the athame, attacking with the deadly accuracy she had perfected in the years since Wyatt had gained power. One of them summoned a fireball, and Caroline allowed herself a brief second to wish the chains didn't still bind her connection to the amulet, before she shoved the athame through its heart, killing it.

With the five demons dead, she nearly took a break, but then she remembered Chris' words.

_This all depends on you being fast, Caroline._

Not pausing for a breath, she flashed out of the room, dragging the chains behind her. She didn't bother with steps, instead jumping down the one level to the next floor, loping in the direction she really, _really_ hoped was south.

It all happened in under three minutes, and she was face-to-face with Chris again.

And Barbas.

"What are you doing here?" she snarled, stepping toward the grey-haired demon with dropped fangs.

"Helping rescue you, of course."

"Why, when you put me here?"

"I put you exactly where you needed to be, Sweetheart," Barbas replied. "And now that I got what I was hoping for, you can go again. We'll be seeing each other soon."

He shimmered away and Caroline turned to Chris, who just shook her head and grabbed her wrist. He poured potions on each of her shackles, and the metal fell away.

"I know, I shouldn't trust Barbas. And I _don't_. But if you want to lecture me, then save it until later. After we're out of here."

"Chris," she said, grabbing his hands and making him stop. "What are you doing? You realize that if you do this, there is no going back, right? This is betrayal… and Wyatt is your brother."

"I know what I'm doing, Caroline," Chris replied. "I… I _needed_ to save you."

"You don't even know me."

"Don't I?" Chris replied, meeting her gaze head on. "Have you ever taken a leap of faith, Caroline? Had your gut tell you something, and then just gone with it? Because you knew you had to."

"No," Caroline replied honestly, staring back at him and feeling torn between wanting to let him do this, let him keep her safe, and thinking that she couldn't let him do this. Not for her. "I'm a neurotic control freak. I don't do leaps of faith."

Chris closed his eyes, and she saw his shoulders fall ever so slightly, and she thought of how he had given her his blood. She thought of him at seventeen and terrified and staring them down so defiantly, even though he was powerless and at their mercy. She had thought him brave, even then. Now she thought him foolhardy…

And maybe she was too, because he made her want to take a leap of faith, when she had never been willing to before.

"I will for you," she said, and Chris' eyes snapped open, surprise lighting their green depths. "It makes me a fool, and we'll probably both regret this… but you make me want to leap. I don't know you… but I think I want to. So let's jump."

Chris' grip tightened on her hand.

"You'll have to shimmer us. If I orb, Wyatt can track-"

Caroline shimmered, and the walls around them disappeared, and when the world came back into focus, they were surrounded by trees.

"- them," Chris finished, looking around while Caroline released his hands and began to walk through the trees.

"Where _are_ we?" Chris asked, still looking around as he followed her.

"Mystic Falls," Caroline replied, and she wasn't sure what had brought her here. Maybe the way he made her think of home, or maybe because she had been thinking of her friends so much as of late, and this was the last place where they had known any sort of happiness. But Chris had said they needed to go, and this is where her thoughts had brought her. "Or the outskirts, anyway. This is Lockwood land. There are crypts here… we should be safe there. For a while."

"Mystic Falls," Chris repeated. She heard his steps pick up speed, until he fell in next to her, an then he grabbed her hand, the warmth of his grip somehow reassuring. "Your home. I remember you guys talking about it."

"Yeah," Caroline replied shortly.

"I'm sorry," Chris said after a moment, and his words made Caroline come up short. "For your friends," he clarified, "my brother killed them. Because of me."

Caroline cocked her head and considered that. She supposed it was true, but never once had she thought to blame Chris for that.

"It wasn't your fault. I never blamed you," she said.

"Why did you do it? It seemed so…"

"Desperate?" Caroline supplied. They reached the entrance to a crypt, and Caroline began to walk down slowly. "That's because we were. Well, Elena was."

"Why?" Chris asked.

Caroline didn't say anything for a moment. She stepped into the crypt, walked down its length until she came to the room Tyler had once learned to turn. She remembered him, the boy she had once loved, and it made her think of his death. Of all their deaths, and why it had happened.

_"They're too powerful."_

_ Elena looked at Bonnie, then at Caroline. _

_ "You're a Bennett. You're supposed to be as powerful as they come!" the brunette stated, slamming her hand against the wall._

_ "Well, our information is wrong. Wyatt is… I've never sensed anything like it before, Elena. Never sensed _power_ like it before."_

_ That thought terrified Caroline, because Bonnie had always been the one to save them. The one to pull off a miracle and keep them alive._

_ "He has Damon. There has to be something," Stefan said._

_ "Then _find_ it," Bonnie snapped, clearly irritated by everyone's disbelief that she was out of ideas. "Because I have no magical solution."_

_ "You found that spell for binding powers," Elena mused. "That potion, right?"_

_ "Yes," Bonnie replied slowly. "But how would we feed it to Wyatt?"_

_ "We don't," Elena replied simply, looking up. Her eyes were lit with an unholy light, the same one they had carried when Damon had died before, and she had turned to drugs to simply see him. Without Damon, Elena turned reckless and dangerous, and Caroline knew she was about to turn that way now. "He has a brother. We make a trade. An eye for an eye."_

_ "And you think he'll go for that?" Caroline asked, trying to be the voice of reason. "Hell, the brother is just a _kid_, Elena."_

_ "He's the same age I was when I was sacrificed," Elena replied shortly. "Sometimes being born with a destiny sucks. Let's teach that to these Halliwells."_

_ Caroline tried to reason, but Elena was determined, and she had Stefan's support. And Bonnie said nothing, focusing instead on making the potion._

_ "We could leave, Gorgeous," said Enzo, the only one of the them that agreed with Caroline's logic, though it was because he didn't want to mess with Wyatt, not because he didn't want to harm the innocent Christopher._

_ "No," Caroline said, watching her friends losing themselves to their mad plot. "You go, but I have to stay."_

_ "You'll die."_

_ "Everyone dies eventually."_

Only when it came time to actually die, Caroline found that she had a survivor's heart. She had fled and lived to be here now, hiding away with the man they had once tried to use in a powerplay. And the rest of them?

Blood on the blade of Excalibur.

"We won't be able to stay here forever," she said at last, taking a seat against the wall where she used to watch over Tyler during the full moon.

"You told me I don't know you," Chris said sitting next to her. "I would like to. But you need to let me in."

Caroline turned her head to look at him. His eyes were so eager as he looked back, and she leaned in, kissing him very, very softly.

"You should look for a girl your own age, Chris. Someone that isn't lost and broken."

"You act like I'm a child!" he growled, getting to his feet again to pace in front of him. "I'm _not_, you know. In case you didn't notice, my brother is the Source of All Evil. He's pissed on everything our family stands for. My mother died in my arms on my fourteenth birthday. There, you know all there is to know about me, and now how about you return the favor?"

He came to a stop in front of her, and Caroline rested her chin on her knee and watched him.

"You didn't mention your father," she said calmly after a moment. Chris growled and turned away.

"He's a sanctimonious prick and I don't like to talk about him," he muttered.

"I don't like to talk about my friends," Caroline replied, and she heard Chris sigh in frustration. For a moment she said nothing, because she _didn't_ like to talk about her friends. But he was right… she should give him _something_. "My dad tortured me. When I first became a vampire. He thought he could _fix_ me, that he could teach me to not drink blood. Like some sort of Pavlovian experiment. And my mom… she hated it too. Plotted to kill me with my ex-boyfriend. We eventually fixed our relationship, but it wasn't easy. Dad… I never got the chance. He died, with vampire blood in his system. He could have chosen to turn… he told me loved me. That I was strong. But he still hated what I was so much that he chose to die. And Mom… even she refused to turn in the end. Suffered agonizing pain to die from cancer. That was a kick to the guts. Sherriff of a town infested with the supernatural, and it's _cancer_ that takes her. She was the last parent left. Well, Matt's mom was still around, but she didn't really count. She was never there. So really, mom was the last" – Chris sat next to her again as she spoke, watching her. She gave him a small smile – "I tried to hold onto normalcy for so long, that when it turned out nothing was normal, I didn't know what to do."

"You survived. Well, if Barbas is to be believed."

"You shouldn't have made a deal with him. He won't hold up his end, Christopher."

"I told you not to call me that," Chris growled again, and Caroline cocked her head.

"Why not? Why do you hate your name so much?"

"I…" Chris shrugged uncomfortably. "I tell you this, you tell me something about you?"

Caroline considered that for a moment, and then nodded.

"Not about my friends."

"Okay. I hate it because that's what Wyatt calls me. He didn't used to… but once everything fell apart, after Mom died and he began to take over the Underworld, I stopped being Chris to him. And…" he hesitated for a moment, then spoke again, quieter this time. "… my dad called me that. When he finally showed up, after I was calling for him and calling for him, for him to save my mom. He called me that and said there was nothing he could do, when if he had just come when I first started to call…"

Chris trailed off and Caroline said nothing. She knew what it was like, to watch a parent (both parents) die, and to be completely helpless as they did so.

"Tell me something happy," Chris said at last, when they had been sitting in contemplative silence for several long minutes.

"I got drunk out in the woods around here once. With…" she paused, because the name she would say here was what he had looked for, for so very long… and what if he was playing her again?

"With?" Chris prompted.

"I don't know if I can trust you," she admitted at last, looking away. "I want to, my instincts say I can… but he is your brother Chris. And if this is just another torture method-"

"It's not," Chris replied emphatically, and Caroline gave him a small smile.

"He's your brother, Chris, And I've seen what happens to those that cross him. I watched him kill the only family I had left for you. What Elena did… it may have been stupid, but she was still my best friend. And he killed her. I can't forget that. And I can't trust that it won't happen again, only this time it will be _my_ blood that covers Excalibur."

"If you can't trust me, then what are we doing here?" Chris asked, closing his eyes and leaning his head against the wall.

"I'm hiding from your brother," Caroline replied. "I'm honestly still not sure what you're doing here."

Chris kept his eyes closed, but a small, wry smile curved his lips at her words. Caroline watched it happened and considered kissing him again, just to see what that smile tasted like. Then she turned her head away sharply, because hadn't she been here before? The stupid girl falling for the wrong guy – a werewolf, an evil hybrid, her best friend that could never love her back – and why did she keep on _doing_ this?

"You're going to trust me someday," Chris stated, reaching out and grasping her hand in his. It was warm and comforting, and Caroline knew she should pull away. Instead she just gripped it as tightly as she dared. "Until then, I'll just wait."

"That's stupid of you," she told him. "I have forever to spend not trusting. Your time is limited. Why waste is on me?"

"Because sometimes you have to go with your gut, Caroline," Chris replied. "And mine is telling me to go with you."

XOVER

Her mother had died of cancer before the world went to hell. At the time, it had been heartbreaking, had nearly sent her into a spiral of self-destruction. Afterwards, she had been relieved. She had barely kept herself alive, had known she would have never been able to keep Liz alive, and at least that was one less person to see murdered.

But the house had been left to Caroline, and she had never bothered to put it on the market.

"It looks like a dump," Chris stated as they snuck in. Mystic Falls was still small, still full of gossip, and Wyatt had spies everywhere.

"It could use a little love," Caroline agreed. She walked down the hall, pausing for a moment in front of a picture – her and her parents, before their divorce and Caroline became a foolish girl who was turned into a less foolish vampire. She was ten and beaming out at the picture. In Caroline's mind, it had always been proof of a happier time, but as she looked at it, she could see that the signs were already there. The way Liz and Bill kept a careful distance between them, the way neither of their smiles quite reached their eyes.

A broken family that just didn't know it yet.

"You were a cute kid," Chris commented from behind her. Caroline ran a finger around her smiling face and shook her head, trying to dislodge the memories.

"I'm still cute," she shot over her shoulder with a quick, flirtatious smile. She knew she shouldn't do that, not when she still didn't quite trust him, not when she wasn't certain she _could_ trust anymore. But something about being in her childhood home… it made her feel closer to the Caroline she used to be. The one that enjoyed flirting an dthe danger of playing bait to Klaus' Big Bad Wolf.

Chris didn't immediately reply to her flirtations, so she looked back at him. He watched her, his head cocked to the side, an odd little smile on his face.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked.

"No reason… you're just… different here. That's all. Happier somehow. It makes me wish we could stay."

"I'm not that different," Caroline replied with a shrug that turned into a shoulder roll as she entered her mother's office. It was untouched from the days when it had just been the two of them, and the safe against the wall lived up to its lifetime warranty as Caroline entered the combination and slid it open slowly. "After all, I didn't exactly come here to reminisce."

"Are those-"

"Guns?" Caroline pulled out the lightweight handgun that her mother had always favored and held it just like Liz had taught her. She thought it might feel alien in her hand, but maybe shooting guns was like riding a bicycle, because it felt just as natural in her palm as it had when she was sixteen and had finally convinced her mother they could stop with the weekly visits to the shooting range after hitting ten headshots in a row on one of the targets. "They belonged to my mother. She kept them in perfect condition until she died. Then I kept them in perfect condition until the world went to hell."

"Why are we taking guns?" Chris asked, taking the canvas bag Caroline handed to him and holding it open as she began to load it up with ammo.

"Because despite what you might think, a bullet to the head kills a demon just as surely as an athame to the heart," Caroline replied. She tucked the handgun into her belt and grabbed her mother's spare, tucking it into Chris'. He stared at it with wide, startled eyes, and Caroline turned back to the safe, pulling out the assault rifle that her mother had taught her to shoot, then forbid her to ever touch again. "I always hated this gun. Mom did, too. I wondered for the longest time why she even had it, when she looked it with so much distaste. Then I found out it was my dad's, and that that was why she kept it. It was weirdly sweet and totally twisted at the same time."

"You don't like it either," Chris noted, sharp gaze on her face as she slung the rifle over her shoulder by the strap attached to it. She double checked that the safety was on, and adjusted it for comfort.

"If you like what you've become at the end of the world, you're doing it wrong," Caroline retorted simply. "No come on. One of the neighbors will notice us here at any moment, and if your brother is smart, he'll be keeping an eye on this place."

Chris held his hand out to her, and she looked at it with confusion.

"Shimmering?" he asked after a moment, motioning her hand at her. "The quickest way to make a clean escape."

Caroline reached out and grasped his hand, feeling some embarrassment. Of course. Shimmering. Two years, and she still hadn't grown used to the ability, still replied on her speed and wits more than any stolen power.

_You've been underusing this, Sweetheart._

It galled her, the memory of Barbas' words and the knowledge that he was right. The amulet hung heavy around her neck, a reminder that she could have power, if she would just _take_ it, instead of relying on abilities that could turn out to be too little at any point.

Case in point – her flight from the demons in the mall.

"You said that Wyatt would sense it, if you orbed?" she asked after a moment.

"Yes…" Chris replied slowly, the word dragging out as he clearly wondered what she was hoping to discover.

"You want me to trust you, then I will. But I need you to orb."

"You want me to bring my brother right to us?" Chris replied incredulously. "Why the hell would you want that?"

"I don't want you to bring Wyatt. I want you to bring his _demons_," Caroline replied, and she began to feel excitement grow in her as a plan formed. "That's who he sent after me last time-"

"Last time you didn't have his brother. Maybe you've forgotten, but Wyatt is rather protective of me. "

Caroline's excitement disappeared at the reminder, and she remembered blood once more. Blood and screaming and running away in terror.

_"Did you think you could truly defeat me?"_

_ Elena glared at Wyatt, her hand at Chris' neck._

_ "Take another step, and I snap his neck. He has vampire blood, so he'll come back… but witches don't do very good as our kind."_

_ Wyatt hesitated, and there was pure venom in his gaze as he stared Elena down. Caroline stood in the shadows, wishing she could stop the madness. But Wyatt had Damon, so Elena took Chris, and now here they all stood. Wyatt stared at them, and Chris was muttering under his breath, and Caroline pitied him and the fear he must be feeling._

_ "Give me Damon," Elena said fiercely. "Give me Damon and you can have your brother back unharmed."_

_ "Damon?" Wyatt looked genuinely puzzled. One of the demons closest to him murmured something, and the confusion became a dark smirk. "Ah, the creature like you. All I can give you is his rotting corpse. My demons killed him already."_

_ Caroline wasn't surprised; she had thought Damon was likely dead, as soon as he had missed the rendezvous, but Elena had been so _sure_, and maybe that certainty had been contagious, because Wyatt's words made Caroline feel a pang of grief._

_ It was nothing to Elena's. She let out a pained sob, and then she moved to snap Christopher's neck._

_ The boy orbed away._

_ Bonnie cursed, and Caroline very nearly did as well. The potion had been administered, his powers should be gone…_

_ A spell, Caroline realized with surprise. He had been muttering a spell to counter the potion._

_ Timed perfectly for his brother's rescue._

_ Christopher out of the way, Wyatt stepped forward, a long sword appearing in his hands. It glowed with power, and though it wasn't wood, it had the same effect as a stake through the heart when Wyatt stabbed her with it, shoving her greying body away with a boot._

_ Then it was Stefan shouting in grief and attacking, and he met the same fate. Bonnie muttered spells, but Wyatt just laughed and her blood joined Elena and Stefan's. Caroline met Enzo's gaze, and he was gone before Matt's body could join the others._

_ Caroline didn't stay to watch Tyler or his witch girlfriend fall._

"Caroline?"

Caroline jerked when Chris reached out to touch her arm, pulling away almost violently. He took a stumbling step back in surprise at her response, and would have fallen, if Caroline hadn't flashed forward at the last moment and helped him regain his footing.

"Are you okay?" he asked as they stood there, her hand gripping his arm, him looking down at her. She looked up at him and said nothing. His eyes were incredibly green, this close, and she could even see a couple of freckles, dusted across his nose.

He was sort of beautiful, she realized with a surprised jolt, and a lot more grown up than he had been three years ago. Then he had been gangly and awkward – all arms and legs. He had grown into his height and limbs, and while he would never be as broad or built as strongly as his brother, there was still a strength to Chris, that she could feel in the muscle beneath her hand.

His free hand came up and cupped her cheek, and when he pulled her into a kiss, she let him. She would blame being in the house that reminded her of a different Caroline, a more careless Caroline, but the simple truth was that she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to kiss her and make her forget the ghosts that lived within these walls, the ghosts that haunted the whole damn town.

And God, but she _wanted_ to trust him.

She kissed him back, bringing her own hand, the one that wasn't still gripping his arm, up to rest over the one on her cheek. It was a sweet kiss. Soft and tender and full of all sorts of promises.

"You should probably stop kissing me," she said, her eyes still closed, when they finally broke apart. Her tongue flicked out, trying to savour the taste of him on her lips. She felt him run his thumb along her cheek and heard him chuckle.

"I'll stop kissing you, when you stop kissing me back," he replied, and then he bent down again. This time, the kiss was harder, more passionate. He weaved his hand into her hair and pulled his arm from her grip to wrap it around her back. Caroline reached up, twining her arms around his neck and kissing him right back.

And when she stood there after they broke apart, both of them breathing frantically, but neither taking a step away from the other, Caroline realized that it didn't matter if her mind warned her against trusting him.

She was already screwed.

XOVER

The intelligent part of Caroline's mind knew she should take a step back. She had always been quick to fall in love, often with the wrong person, but rarely did she ever let that love blind her to reality. She kept her priorities in order… but with Chris… somehow, with Chris, it was different.

Maybe it was the way he said _trust me_, and she simply did. She shouldn't. He was the brother of The Source of All Evil, the all-powerful witch that wanted nothing more than to see Caroline's species extinct. And now that his younger brother had run off with her? Wyatt's quiet war against the vampires like her had stopped being quiet. Open season had been declared on all of them, and anyone that could bring him Caroline?

"Well at least I know my value now," Caroline muttered as she and Chris paused in front of an electronics store, where her face was once again being plastered on every station. Chris' remained absent – Wyatt didn't want the whole world to know his brother had gone AWOL – but hers had been plastered everywhere for two months.

"We have to keep moving," Chris stated, looking around in what she imagined he thought was a surreptitious manner, but to her seemed way too obvious.

"We really have to work on your sneaking abilities," she told him, pulling his hat down a little and brushing his hair behind his ears.

"I'm sorry I don't have as much experience, Miss I-Avoided-The-Source-For-Three-Years," Chris muttered in return.

"You have other charms," Caroline replied with a smile, but her eyes had darted over his shoulder, and her voice lowered as she stepped closer to him, wrapped her arms around his waist. "Probes are coming. Work your magic, Darling."

"You could do it too," Chris murmured, leaning down to press his lips to hers. As the probes flew up and began to scan, he flicked his fingers and sent them elsewhere like a champ.

"You have more style," Caroline replied, with a grin that didn't quite reach her eyes. Her gaze flicked to the screen again, where her face had been replaced with burning buildings in London, and her heart skipped a beat.

_Enzo_.

God, she hoped he was okay.

"Let's go," she said, forcing her gaze away from the screen and heading for the mall exit. Chris took another look at the screen before following her.

"Care?" he asked, and Caroline froze as the nickname fell from his lips.

_"Care, this is our only chance."_

_ "I think it will be our last chance for anything."_

_ It was a scathing response to what she viewed as Elena's stupidity – it was also the last thing she ever said to her._

"Don't call me that," she said harshly, and the tone had Chris stepping back with surprise. Caroline closed her eyes at that, because it wasn't fair. It wasn't his fault.

It was Wyatt's. And Elena's herself.

"You don't like it when I call you Christopher," she said at last, voice softer. "Because Wyatt calls you that. And your Dad – oh, don't look at me like that. I'm not an idiot. I know two and two equals four. Well… my friends called me Care. And then I left them to die. So don't call me that."

She began to walk again. She thought to stop, wait for him to catch up, but it felt as though Elena and Bonnie and the others haunted her steps, and that if she stopped they might catch her.

She was pretty sure that would break her.

"You know it wasn't your fault, right?" Chris asked, catching up to her with quick steps. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, but Chris continued to stare straight ahead. "My brother… Wyatt… he would have killed you, too. As soon as I was taken, they were marked as dead. You ran to survive another day. That doesn't make you a coward, and it doesn't make it your fault. Me though… I could have done the spell sooner. I could have orbed away-"

"You were a scared seventeen year old kid," Caroline replied bluntly, and she thought back to when she was seventeen and terrified and turning into a vampire. How lost and alone she had felt, how horrible, terrifying memories of Damon and the things he had done had come back to her in a rush that left her dry heaving into a toilet. "I remember being seventeen."

"When you became a vampire," Chris remarked.

"You talk too much, did you know that?"

"And you don't talk enough."

No one had ever accused Caroline of not talking enough, and the remark had a smile curving her lips. The world going to hell had made her cautious, but she had never thought of it as making her _silent_.

She opened her mouth to tell Chris as much, when a fireball hit her shoulder.

"Shit," she heard Chris swear as she hit the wall hard.

"Get out of our way, kid," she heard a demon say, but Chris stood in front of her defiantly, staring them down.

What happened next was horrifying and too quick for her to catch. One moment, the demon was sneering at him, the next he had thrown a fireball that Chris was too slow to dodge, hitting him square in the chest.

A blow that Caroline could have weathered, but that would kill a human like Chris.

Caroline snarled, felt her fangs drop, and leapt at the demon. It didn't have time respond, before Caroline had pressed her amulet against its forehead, called up the magic that would drain away its powers.

And with them, its life.

She could feel it rise in her, the ability to summon the flames, as she dropped the demon away from her. She stood for a moment, eyes closed, breathing deeply, and then heard Chris' weak, rattling breaths.

She flashed to his side, and he reached up to hold her hand. His chest was burned, the skin dark and crisped.

"So that's how you get them," Chris said weakly. "Cool amulet. Never noticed it before."

"It's spelled," Caroline replied, pulling her hand away. Chris looked heartbroken, and Caroline realized he thought he was dying. That this was it for him, and that she was simply going to leave him to do so alone.

"You're not dying," she told him, her voice fierce and strong. He blinked at her, and she raised her wrist to her mouth, biting, and then offering it to Chris. He grimaced, and she glared down at him. "Don't be a dick about it, Chris," she stated, biting into her wrist again, and this time pressing it right to his lips. He choked down some of the blood before spluttering and pushing her arm away.

"What the… _hell_?" he stared down at his chest in shock as the burn receded and the skin knitted back together. "Caroline… what. The. Hell?"

Caroline grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him up, pressing her lips to his fiercely. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. They remained like that, kissing each other and holding each other, until the hum of a probe broke them apart and reminded them that they were still in public.

"You're not allowed to die on me," she told him, hauling him to his feet. She pushed his hair off his forehead, and he smiled at her, catching her hand when she began to pull it away.

"Does this mean you trust me?" he asked, with a grin that lit his eyes and made her pull him in for another kiss. Because he had almost died, and damn if the thought didn't make her heart feel as though it were being squeezed by a vice.

"Don't push your luck," she said, pulling away from him with a grin. She began to walk down the street, her hand coming up to her amulet, and she felt the new firepower in it surge in her fingertips.

"Fine… but you love me."

Caroline paused, releasing the amulet to reach out for his fingers. Like when she summoned the flames, heat sparked when she touched his skin, and she held on as tightly as she could without hurting him.

"I think you might be right," she told him solemnly, smile gone. Her words made his mouth fall open just a bit in surprise, and then heat flared in his eyes, and he pulled her into a tight embrace.

"I love you, too."

XOVER

Love came easy. Trust came slower.

But it came.

It turned out that you couldn't go on the run with someone for any sort of significant length without eventually trusting them to have your back. And Chris was a great person to have at her back. He was powerful as only a Halliwell could be, and he caught on quickly to how to be sneaky. He was clever and brave and seemed to know exactly what she needed before she even said it. Slowly, she began to tell him about her friends, even Enzo, though she never said where he was. To Chris' benefit, he never asked. Instead he told her about his mother and his aunts and the great things they had accomplished. He told her about Wyatt, before he turned evil, and about the horrible day when his mother died and everything began to go to hell.

But with each day that they grew closer, that she grew to care for him more fiercely, she saw him become more jaded.

Chris had known, of course, what his brother was doing. At least on an intellectual level.

But _knowing_ and _seeing_ were two different things.

Each day he looked at her with a little more love, but he looked at the world with a little more cynicism. No longer was Wyatt his brother, but instead _the Source_ or _that Jackass_, depending on his mood. Caroline agreed with the sentiment, but it broke her heart to see Chris so… disenchanted by his last living family member.

Or at least who she had thought was his last living family member. Until she met his father.

They had been together for eighteen months, and in that time Chris had pointed out one of their main difficulties – her diet. Usually she ate and compelled, but with her face plastered everywhere, it was getting tougher to do so without attracting attention.

So Chris had pointed out that he had perfectly good blood, and why didn't she just drink that?

She had remembered the taste of him, so strong and sweet. So potentially _addicting_, and had nearly said no.

Then they had gotten cornered on one of her hunts and it had been Chris who had nearly died again. She fed him her blood, and when he came back to her she had said fine, that she would feed off of him. Anything that would keep that from happening again.

And that's how Leo Wyatt had orbed in on them at the most inopportune time.

The thing about Chris' blood, was that the power it held affected Caroline in more ways than one.

To state it bluntly, his blood made her horny.

So feeding more often than not involved sex. At first Caroline wasn't quite sure how she felt about it. But with time, came the realization that it made her feel close to him. That the feeding was… intimate, in ways it hadn't been with anyone else.

To her and Chris, it was sacred, a sort of connection.

To Leo, it was an abomination.

"That hurts," she said as she was thrown into the wall by lightning. She had been straddling Chris, drinking from his neck, in just her underwear, and now she was slumped against the wall in bra and panties while a man in golden robes loomed above her.

"What the hell, Leo?" she heard Chris shout, and then the robed man was thrown into the other wall, courtesy of Chris' telekinesis. He was still wearing his jeans, and stepped between them, his green eyes flashing.

"She was _feeding_ on you, Christopher!" the man, Leo, grated out.

"Yeah, I'm perfectly aware of that," Chris sneered in return. He knelt down next to Caroline. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Feeling a little naked, but fine."

Chris grabbed his shirt and handed it to her, and Caroline swiftly pulled it on. It didn't hang as long as she might like, but at least it covered all the important bits.

"What are you doing here, Leo?" Chris asked, and his voice had lost some of its anger, sounded more resigned.

"I came to make sure you were safe. Your brother… I found out that you weren't with him anymore."

"You saw Wyatt and lived? And here I thought it was open season on Elders."

"I'm still his father, Chris. And yours."

Caroline stared at that. She knew that Chris hadn't particularly liked his father, but for some reason she had thought the man was dead. Apparently not.

"Your _dad_?" she asked him, looking at the man more closely, searching for some sort similarity between the two. She thought maybe their noses were similar, but otherwise could see nothing to tie Chris to the man.

"My sperm donor," Chris corrected bitterly. "_Dad_ insinuates some sort of presence. He couldn't even be bothered to come and save his own wife when I called."

"Chris-"

"Yeah, I know. It's my fault or whatever. We need to go Caroline."

"What?" she asked, staring at him as he tossed her jeans and tank top to her. "Why?"

"Because Leo here just orbed a great big neon sign over our location. Thanks _dad_."

"Your brother is… misguided," Leo began, throwing Caroline a scowl when she let out an inelegant snort at the understatement. "But I agree with him about your companion. She is a vampire. One of the very species that nearly killed you."

"Hell, she's more than that, Leo," Chris replied while Caroline pulled on the jeans. "She's one of the ones that kidnapped me."

Caroline froze at that and turned to glare at him, while Leo's expression showed complete dismay.

"What?" he demanded.

"You're a dick," Caroline said at the same time, tearing off his shirt and throwing it in his face before pulling on her own. "And if you're going to be like that, then you can go to hell. I'm not your toy to use to piss off daddy."

"Care-"

But Caroline had already shimmered away. She didn't want to hear Chris' apologies, or to see Leo's disapproval because she wasn't what he had envisioned for his little boy.

When she reappeared, it was in her mother's study. She sat at the desk, and looked around. Nearly half a decade of dust had accumulated there, in the house that was frozen in time, a monument to the Forbes family that once was.

She leaned back, closing her eyes. She knew that Chris hadn't meant to make light of that day, that he probably hadn't even really thought of it that way, that his words seemed to mock the loved ones Caroline had lost.

She probably shouldn't have left like that.

She looked out the window, at the town that had never seemed to change, yet was nothing like the Mystic Falls of her youth. It had all gone to hell, and suddenly she felt so fucking tired. This house was all that was left of her childhood, and suddenly Caroline wished it was gone.

She got to her feet and made her way to the garage. There were cans of gasoline, where her mother had always left them. Caroline hefted two in her hands and carried them back into the house. As she began to pour the cans out, she wondered if this was how Elena had felt after Jeremy had died, back when they were still young and learning that happy endings were simply myths.

She wondered if her friend had felt this sense of hopelessness, of simply wanting to see any reminders of what she'd once had and lost to be gone.

Or maybe it had just been pragmatism, because Elena had turned off her humanity when she had finally dropped that match.

Caroline played with the switch herself, imagined it in her mind and thought about flicking it. Then the image was replaced with green eyes and a jaded, crooked smile, and she knew it wasn't an option.

"Caroline?"

"You always know when I need you," she mused when she felt Chris at her back.

"We have to go. My orbs… he'll know where I am."

"Yeah. We need to go," Caroline agreed. She summoned a fireball in her palm, held it out in front of her.

"What are you doing, Caroline?" Chris asked, stepping up to her side.

"Therapy," she replied shortly. "The only kind I know of."

And she let the fireball fall. She watched the fire run along the trails of gasoline, watched it begin to lick at the walls, then reached out for Chris' hand.

"We can't keep running like this," she told him. "At some point, something has to give."

"I know," Chris agreed, and there was a deep sadness in his eyes as he said it. "And I have a plan."

Caroline nodded, and then shimmered them away from the burning wreck of what had once been her home.

XOVER

"I think you might be insane," she said as she began to draw a triquetra on the wall. Chris had shown her what it looked like, but she still thought this was insane. "Time travel? Is it even possible."

"I'm a Halliwell. Anything is possible," Chris replied. "I don't quite know what I'm going to do, when I get there."

"You said that your dad… _Leo_ told you that whatever happens, it happens before Wyatt's second birthday, right?"

Caroline stepped back to admire the triquetra and dusted her hands off. Not half bad, for someone that hadn't even known what it was an hour ago.

"Yeah… but that still doesn't tell me what to _do_."

"Why don't you just tell them? Hey, I'm Chris. I'm your son. Now let's save my asshole big brother, because he wasn't always the dick bag that wants to kill my girlfriend."

"Future consequences."

"Well that's stupid," Caroline pointed out pragmatically. "You _want_ to change the future."

"A surgical strike. One small thing, and that's it. I think you should marry me."

She spun around from her admiration to stare at him. He stood there, holding a small ring toward her. Once, it wouldn't have been at all for her. She had always appreciated shiny and ostentatious… but this? This diamond that Chris was holding, to the girl she was now?

It was perfect.

"You're not seriously asking me to marry you right now?"

"I want to know that there's at least one good thing left to me here," Chris replied. "So, yeah. I'm asking you right now."

"I'm immortal. You'll die someday, and I won't ever age past seventeen."

"So I'll be a dirty old man. I already knew this and it didn't bother me."

Caroline nodded, still staring at the ring.

"Yes," she said finally, and Chris' face lit up with a bright grin. A grin that had a similarly brilliant smile lighting Caroline's face.

"Yeah?" he asked, and she could just nod. He pulled her to him, kissed her as passionately as he could, and she held onto him tightly. He put the ring on her finger, and she rested her forehead against his.

"Come back to me," she whispered against his lips.

"Always," he swore.

"I still think you just tell them," she added with a smirk, breaking away from him. "I mean, it's not like anything could get worse, right?"

"Famous last words, Caroline."

"Fine. Just… be safe, Chris. _Please_."

"I will," he promised.

And then he summoned the Book of Shadows to him. And Caroline watched as a Halliwell did what they were born to do, and performed magic so amazing it shouldn't be possible.

And as a demon shimmered into the attic of the Halliwell Mansion, Caroline spun around to take care of it while Chris ran for the portal.

When she turned back, demon dead behind her, he was gone.

Caroline clutched the ring on her finger, and prayed for his safe return. She thought she would feel relief, knowing that Chris had gone to save them all.

Instead, she just felt sick.

**AN: And here ends part one. Part two will obviously take place between the unchanged future and the past. And things will be different, because Caroline is **_**not**_** Bianca. So we'll see how that goes.**


End file.
